The Sounds of A Bleached Voice
by sulli-ssi
Summary: "I can feel your shoulders shake. Wetness falls on the back of my neck – the dew drops from your eyes. Wipe them away, please. I do not mean to cause you such sadness." IchiRuki one-shot.


**A/N: **I swear, doing mundane tasks always gives me weird plot bunnies. Sorry for the grammatical/spelling errors (if/when you find any), because this was written while I was doing an English essay on The Book Thief (by Markus Zusak; read it and literally weep).

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First come the poked holes in the darkness that are soft and moist against my cheeks.

It takes me a while to realise that they are not holes, because they are falling.

They do it very quickly.

I feel myself sitting up, and I begin to wonder why I did such a thing. The white things – snow, I think it's called – have blanketed me, but they are not cold. They are cool when they touch my skin but instantly warm when they hit the ground, amongst their fellow beads. I try to think of why I removed myself from that place, so nice and full of all the happy things that I think I _should_ know but I don't. The warmth reminds me of orange.

_"Rukia-sama."_

I turn my head to the voice, and a woman is there. She is looking at me with gentle, pale eyes. She must have blended in with the snow, I surmise quickly, because her skin is as white as the warm blanket on the ground. There are a few splashes of colour on her yukata. Her lips are painted a light red colour that do not hurt my eyes, and yet…these seem to be lost in the landscape as well.

She is beautiful, and I am envious, even though I do not even know how I look.

She is my companion.

She is my soul.

This woman, the _yuki_ _onna_, is very gracious to me. We talk and we never tire. I learn her name quickly through such civil interactions – '_Sode no Shirayuki'_; it speaks volumes of her nature, of her origin – 'sleeve of the white snow'. Who has come up with such a thing, I asked once, and she just smiled at me and said that I should be commended for it.

I like these conversations. They are safe.

It is as if the world has stopped just to allow this simple comfort to happen, but I realise that that is neither the case, nor will it ever be.

I hear your voice.

It is mixed with others. You sound particularly loud and obnoxious; you cut off a cool voice with your own. There is more shouting. It is only wordless white noise.

Sode no Shirayuki lets your voice be heard throughout her realm – my soul, she once told me – and I look questioningly at her. "Do you know what that is?"

She sends me a sad smile. "You will know when you wake."

~0~0~0~

I do not count the time as it passes. There is no such use for it from where I am.

Being wrenched from my own world is another matter.

For the first time in what I think is my very long life, I cannot move.

My heart and lungs and organs continue to do their roles, but they are far too heavy, weighing down even my eyelids when I so desperately want to see the light that filters through them and lets me see orange with tendrils of delicate red.

Orange – spiky and bright like the sun –

The thought cuts itself off, and I am left to wander in nothingness yet again.

When I hear your voice for the second time, my brain instantly wakes. I still cannot move, but I can feel my hand be taken into yours – my own are very small that yours practically wrap around them. Your skin is rough. I can feel the little groves in it, the small bumps that must be wounds or callouses. Why is your touch so gentle, then?

You whisper garbled, unintelligible words. You are under water and I am above it – or is it the other way around?

How do I know if I'm the one drowning and you're the one trying to save me?

~0~0~0~

You come to my bedside every night.

I count the days by the number of heartbeats ringing in my ears. I know the routines, the people who work 'on' me like I am a mere object that needs maintenance. I feel needles in my skin. I never get hungry, or thirsty.

I. Just. Can't. Move.

_Move_, I tell myself every day. _Move, move, move_.

My body has never been so foreign.

But I hear you talk to me with words that I cannot understand, despite their increasing clarity.

You never miss a night.

I can hear you grow. Your voice becomes much deeper. Your touch never loses its gentility – I am a fragile creature, your thumb screams at me as you draw random circles on the back of my hand while you hold it. You never lose the life in which you tell stories that you seem to expect me to hear and understand, but I don't, and it hurts.

Why does it hurt?

I have had lots of people come 'talk' to me without you around, and I do not feel the same pang of guilt at not being able to understand them.

So what makes you so different?

~0~0~0~

Everything becomes clearer on the 4,093rd day, on the 98, 232nd hour that I can finally understand you.

Something just clicks. Maybe it is your somber tone – I have heard it many times before. I know your different tones. I can see the expressions that your face makes, even though I have no idea how you look. My memories throw at me the vague crinkling of brows, the slight downturn of lips, an intense dark amber gaze. This is you, my heart thinks, whenever I hear you speak.

"…and Inoue is so happy now," you say. Inoue? Who is that? "You should have seen Ishida; that prissy bitch can't help himself from making her dress for her."

A man who makes dresses for this Inoue person. You say such vulgarities and yet speak with such familiarity and happiness.

I begin to wonder why you do this, why you do not seek happiness for yourself. Are you that content with watching others obtain fulfilment? If so…then why are you watching _me_? Why do you visit me, when all that I can do is keep my will to live with an iron grip of the hope that your voice gives me.

I realise that my hand is tired. I cannot hold on for much longer.

~0~0~0~

"You used to kick me a lot," you tell me one night. I want to smile, but I don't know why; maybe it's because I can hear the smile in your voice. The nostalgia. It affects me, even though this 'me' that you keep telling me about does not sound like me. I do not want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt that voice. "I mean, not that I miss it or anything. It's just…no one else can kick some sense into me more than you can, y'know? I think your words dried the rain in my soul that day, when I…visited my mother, and Grand Fisher came and I fought him and you told me not to die and I didn't. You didn't ask, I think, because you understood. Feel free to wake up and kick my ass for assuming."

Your bitter laugh wrenches my insides.

"But still…I'm glad you said that. I'm glad…that you took my heart into consideration. No wonder I gave it to you."

We are in sync, you and I. The well-oiled machine that is starting to rust, and the broken toy beyond repair – we are doomed to fail and implode, but I think: _at least we'll do it together_.

I wonder: if you hold my hand tight enough, will your life flow into me, too?

~0~0~0~

One day, you tell me three words:

"I love you."

I do not understand, at first, and I became afraid that my hearing was going through regression, that I would sink into the depths of my own soul. You say 'I' and 'you', but the word in between is so foreign to me that I presume that it is something disdainful. You have choked the own words from your throat, and I don't want that.

"God, I love you."

Your voice is broken as you lift my head and wrap your arms awkwardly around my neck. My face falls on your shoulder, and I feel the hardness of the muscles underneath the layers of cloth that you are wearing. I can smell your spring smell – the smell of falling sakura petals and a calming waterfall, intense and gentle and beautiful all at once.

I can feel your shoulders shake. Wetness falls on the back of my neck – the dew drops from your eyes.

Wipe them away, please. I do not mean to cause you such sadness.

But you say this and you do this for two nights in a row. It does not help my heart when you do this. I want to catch each of those drops and make it as if they had never appeared. I WANT TO MOVE –

"Rukia."

You say her name – my name, I think, and this is the first time that I hear it – with such reverence that it is a prayer. You say that name every night, just when I'm about to go to 'sleep'. It is a whisper in my dreams.

You might as well have been loving another woman.

You cannot know that I am and will never be that woman again. I did not even know who I was until you called my name. I did not even want for it.

But maybe, just for you, I will have to need it.

~0~0~0~

There was a time when you didn't visit. I have begun to miss you immensely. My will to move strengthens and I am able to twitch my fingers when I am sure no one is around – my other senses have improved, you see. I can hear anyone coming from a mile away. I know their footsteps.

But yours, yours is just like theirs when you finally came to me again.

"I'm dead." You sound happy. Why are you happy?!

Those are the first two words that you tell me, and I know that it is you because of your voice, and my fingers twitch. You don't notice, because you're not holding my hand. Are you looking at me? Look, please. See that I'm alive now, and even if you tell me that you're not, surely you can see if I can still hear. Stop joking around, this isn't funny please look look look

"We're the same now."

Why don't I feel sad that you're dead? What, are you telling me that _I'm_ dead? Impossible!

"So you better wake up and start loving me again."

I move my fingers harder than I ever have, and my hand finally lifts, then my arm. I move my lips to tell you that I think I have never stopped doing so.

You start to walk away. I don't think you ever looked back to see my arm outstretched into the air, because by the time I bolt upright, you have already closed the door.

~0~0~0~

My body is heavy again, but I can still move silently. Stealthily. Living in your own mind tends to make you shifty, you know.

No one notices me as I follow your smell, faint as it may be.

I hear voices on the other side of a shoji door.

They stop when I slide the door open.

The heaviness falls away when you look at me with wide eyes, and _I knew it, your eyes are the same, you have the same bright orange hair you bastard, why have you –_

I look at you and I can feel myself returning, even as I am leaning forward because of this sudden lightness that I am able to experience for the first time in a long time. My own voice is loud and defiant in my mind.

I am telling myself to remember as I fall, ever so slowly.

You catch me.

You do it quickly. Without hesitation, without fail.

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**END**


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